


Naming

by Sookiestark



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Children, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-17 10:24:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12363657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sookiestark/pseuds/Sookiestark
Summary: Ten years, after the War with the White Walkers, Brienne rules Tarth with Tormund as her husband. Tormund believes they are happy until Brienne asks to name their seventh child Jaime.





	1. Chapter 1

He misses the cold on warm days. All the days are warm here, He finds the heat unsettling, but he tolerates it for her.

The food is too rich, full of butter and bacon, wine sauce, peppers from Dorne, tomatoes peaches and plums from the Reach, places even warmer than here. The tastes are rich with heady tastes of gravy and Southron sensibilities.

 

He likes the sea of Tarth, with its color and the brutal waves crashing on the rocky shore, but wishes it was colder. He can remember being at Hardhome and at Eastwatch and seeing the large pieces of ice floating on the sea in winter. He remembers how the cold would burn him. No matter how cold it gets here, it rarely burns. It is gentler here in Tarth, a soft Southron world.

After the War, the seasons changed. Now, winter comes once a year, as does summer. Both for a few months. It is a kinder world to have a summer once a year. But it is strange and he longs for the cruelty of a world where winter could last a decade or longer. 

Tarth’s sea are the color of her eyes and so when he wakes and sees them, he always laughs at the joy of being husband to such an extraordinary woman. She wakes irritable and doesn’t laugh as frequently as him, but when she holds their babies or teaches them how to ride or hold a spoon he sees how much she cares for them. They are precious to her as they are precious to him. 

There are things he likes about her home at Evenfall Hall, but sometimes he wishes for a timber and mud keep on the edge of the great woods with dogs by the fire. Her Keep is huge like Castle Black with stone and glass and iron. He never thought to live in such a place and never desired to. Sometimes, the vastness of the castle or all the rules of the Kneelers make him feel like he is suffocating, drowning and he hates it here. However, he does it for her. He does it for the time she smiles gently at him or says his name with his hair threaded through her large fingers. 

 

After ten years of marriage, their keep is filled with the sound of their seven children and their laughter rings through the halls. It is a beautiful sound. 

 

Once a year, he goes to his small keep in the North, a gift from the Starks on the New Gift, for his bravery and his loyalty in the War. He takes his oldest boys with him and they hunt and sleep out in the ground. His folk, the Free Folk, live on his land and farm and herd goats and sheep. His steward, Ryker, collects the rents and is the steward for him while he is in his wife’s lands. However, they are always glad to see him and he is glad to be among them. Sometimes, he wishes to stay there with his boys and teach them how it was to be a member of the Free Folk. Jon, his oldest boy and heir to Tarth, is seven and he does not have the heart of a Free Folk. He is strong and quiet like his namesake and his mother, good with a sword and a thinker, but rigid with honor. But his second son, Selwyn, who is six, is his father’s son, loud and full of laughter and life. He will get his father’s keep in the New Gift and he will understand his father’s people. 

In the beginning, it was more difficult to come so far South and to be her husband. A husband to a lady. Her bannermen stared in shock at the him in his furs, with his long thick beard and his barbaric ways. There was talk that Brienne had been seduced by his perversity and wicked ways. Of course, there was plenty of wild barbaric pleasures in their bedroom. Quickly, the household servants of Evenfall Hall knew to not listen when the Lady and her husband was in their bedroom, or in the dining room, or the library. Once, he even had her in the stables. 

They had been married in the godswood at Winterfell with a great many people, celebrating and delirious on their victory. By the time they had reached this island, she was pregnant 

He knew that this large woman was the one for him and when she finally came to him, he realized he had never truly felt matched in the bedroom by any woman, until her. Their first time, he had been painstakingly slow and patient. When he finally entered her, she had cried out and her hips had canted against him. She had been slightly awkward, embarrassed about her body, apologetic, but he had told her she was beautiful and he was the luckiest man in the whole of the South. He had concentrated on her body and by the time he finished, she was his, crying out his name in his shoulder, over and over like a oath or a vow. Tormund knew that was the sound of his home, and he never wanted anything more than her calling his name in the dark of their bed.

He knows he is gruff and wild next to her. He knows she is thoughtful and says less and feels more. He says everything he feels. He is loud and expressive. But he loves her fiercely, entirely. He is happy, happier than he ever thought he could be. She is the only Kneeler he has ever loved. He knows he does not understand all her complexities. There are some that think he is stupid. They do not know him. 

 

The Free Folk often wait until a child is two years or older to name it. Kneelers name a child on the day it is born. They have fallen into a habit of not naming their children until they are several months old. It is a compromise, a meeting of two cultures, like their marriage. 

When the first child was born, she was a tiny, red faced, red haired, thing. His wife had wanted to name her almost the minute his daughter first howled at them. He had pressed a finger to her lips, telling her it was bad luck to name a child so young. So, they had waited..

 

On the night of her second month, he had taken the tiny baby in his arms to feel the spray of the sea on the air and see the outside world for the first time. He had sung her songs of battles, lost and won, good men who had died, and how once a Wall stood higher than the clouds and he climbed it. He had brought her in and handed her to his wife. She had looked at him and said, “I would like to name her Sansa.” 

Sansa was nine now and had flowing red hair, like her namesake. Only she was so much bigger and stronger than the older Sansa was, fierce and wild like her father. Once, he called her Ygritte and laughed at his mistake. He hoped she would be strong and stubborn like Ygritte had been. Maybe, in this soft new world, girls, like Ygritte, would live long happy lives.

Their first son came the next year. When two months passed and the time to name him came, the boy had blondish red fuzz all over his head and bright blue eyes, well made and healthy. He had taken the boy and showed him the stars. It had been snowing. He had talked to him in the long dead language of giants and told him how he would rule his mother’s land in her name, so he must learn all the Southern ways and customs. Then, he told him of a land of his father’s, much farther north, where the ancient pines cover the skies and the snows grow deep and how they will go there when he is bigger and able to ride a horse.

When returned from the winter night with his son in his arms, he laid his son in his crib. He told his wife that he wanted to name him Jon. She had smiled and said that was a fine name. 

The years were kind to them and blessed them with a child almost every year. They have Sansa, Jon, Selwyn, Arya, Mance, and Renly. 

Their newest child is almost five months. He has blonde fuzz all over his big head and a sweet disposition. He is quick to smile and laugh. All his brothers and sisters love him and dote on him.  
They have not named him yet. He is going to tell her that he thinks it is time to name the boy and he would like to name him Sandor, after the burned man with sad eyes who saved his life.

He sits next to her and she smiles at him. In her arms, she holds their son gently. He never knew she could have such gentleness in her. His big strong wife is soft hearted. He speaks first, “I think it is time we name the boy.”

She licks her lips and speaks immediately, “I agree. I would like to name him Jaime.” 

 

He remembers the golden haired man who walked into the army of the dead, laughing. Jaime Lannister had saved the life of Tormund Giantsbane and many men on the battlefield that day. Brienne had tried to go back for him, into the wall of dragon fire. She would have walked bravely into that inferno for her Kingslayer, but Tormund had blocked her.

He still had the scars from her sword to prove he had stopped her. He thought he might die trying to keep her from killing herself. She had been relentless and so angry, until her boy Pod came behind her and knocked her out. 

When Brienne says Jaime’s name, after all these years, he looks at her in the firelight and wonders if, after all they have lived, if she grieves for him still. 

 

It shouldn't trouble him 

Because in bed she calls his name, when he is between her thighs.

But somehow, it bothers him so much he can barely breathe.

He kisses the crown of her straw blonde hair and tells her “I will think on it, wife.” 

 

He feels her watch him walk away, to the room they share that overlooks the sea. He hears her call after him, but he does not answer her and he does not stop walking away.


	2. Chapter 2

She finds him in the abandoned tower facing the sea. She had gone to find him in their room and he was not there. She went to the ramparts to see if he was there and he was not. She went to the kitchens to see if he was eating roast potatoes or bread pudding. He was not there. 

She went to the nursery, where the twins Arya and Mance lie sleeping in together, like they had their whole lives, four years old, redheaded, wild as the sea and as fierce. Arya has been sick, since she was young with a cough. Sometimes it is hard for her to breathe. Maester Nestor has her breathe herbs in a bag. Sometimes it helps. Sleeping with her brother seems to make her problems less often, less severe. In bed nearby, Renly is blonde and big, even at two, and looks just like his mother. She could usually find Tormund here, usually on the floor or one one of the beds with one or all of the children, sleeping on him. He makes an excellent father, though he has a great love of rule breaking and general mischief. 

Giving birth had never been difficult for her. It was the first activity that she had excelled at that was women's work. Motherhood was also something she excelled at, which surprised her, because she hadn’t seen herself as maternal. Jaime had been right when he had told her all those years ago that she would be a wonderful mother. 

It is then she knows where her husband is in the abandoned tower facing the sea. It reminds him of his youth and the sea. She sees the ropes outside the staircase and knows he climbed it like it was the Wall and he was a wildling, and not her husband and a Lord. It makes her smile and shake her head. Her husband is like a man from another world. She takes the stairs.

It was cold in this great stone tower that faces the sea. She wished that she had brought a coat but her husband would tease her. The mist from the sea brought a chill to the air and her bones.

Her husband is all about pleasure. He is about joy and living life, taking every last drop of joy he can get from it. Whether it is sex or his wild stories of when he was young or wrestling with the children, eating too many sweet foods or drinking that terrible soured goat’s milk, it is all about the joy of being alive. He has taught her that life isn’t all honor and loyalty. It is the joy of holding her baby’s tiny hand as they take their first little steps, or riding a horse, or eating too much bread pudding, or swimming in the sea on the first night of winter, or just being loved by a big strong red headed man. 

Jaime Lannister would not have been able to teach her about joy. He told her so that night so very long ago. Though she didn’t believe him then, she believes him now. Perhaps, he did know her better than she knew herself. She still remembers how she came to him on the night before he died. She remembers it always a little softly, as if it is a bruise still too tender to touch. Ten years and the memory is still sore.

She went to his room with purpose, determined and slightly grim. He would take her maidenhead. After all if the world ends in ice tomorrow, wouldn’t she want to be with him at the end of everything? If nothing matters, wouldn’t she end up at his door? 

If she thinks about it now, she laughs at herself for being so grim at the bedchamber of the man she had hoped to make her lover.

She knocked on the door, not too loudly, but firmly.

He opened the door, joking thinking that she was his brother.

As soon as she saw him, getting ready for bed, with no jacket, no armor, she immediately flushed from the shame of what she was about to do.

His face was gentle, when he saw it was her, without all the sarcasm and jaded irony it usually held.

“Can I come in?”

“Of course,” he said stepping away from the door. 

He leaves the door open for her honor. The door is open and she is free to leave. It is also to protect her. She is a maiden and he is a scoundrel who sleeps with his twin sister. Shutting the door means they have something that they need privacy for. 

An open door means she is a maid still. The Maid of Tarth.   
She closes the door.

Taking him by surprise, with all the grace of a bear, she pulls him to her and kisses him, pushing through the shame, tells him she is there to bed him. 

Jaime Lannister pulls away from her, never taking his eyes from hers. He touches her face and looks closely at her to see if she is joking. Of course, he already knows that Brienne of Tarth does not make jokes and she definitely wouldn’t joke about this. He holds her still, “Shh.. slow down, Brienne.”

After a minute, he steps away from her, laughs and pours her a drink and one for himself, “Well, if that is your intention, it sounds like we might need some of this shit wine?”

She wants to tell him all the feelings in her heart, but she doesn’t have all the words to make him understand. When she closes her eyes in the cold dark, she only sees him. When she opens her eyes in the dawn, she hopes his face will be what she sees in the morning light. Only him. Perhaps, she has waited her whole life to find him. She knows he doesn’t feel the same. After all, he loved his sister, truly and deeply. But she will take whatever scraps of his heart might be left after Cersei. It would be better to have a tiny broken piece than to have nothing at all of him. She has resigned herself to whatever Cersei has left for her. 

He hands her a cup and motions for her to sit in the wooden chair. He perches himself on the narrow bed that he sleeps in. They drink and talk about where they have been, stories of Riverrun siege, of the Winterfell being rebuilt and fortified for the upcoming war. They talk about Tyrion, Podrick, Bronn, her duel with the Hound. They never speak of Cersei and her demise. The conversation comes to the future, what will happen if they win this war against the dead. 

“My father has sent a message that I should return to Tarth. Whether or not I marry, I could be the Lady of Tarth. He says I don't have to marry. I could rule Tarth in my own right and give it to a cousin as my heir. He just wants me to return home to him.”

“Excellent news. I would like to see you in Tarth, the Evenstar.”

“Do not mock me.” She stands to leave and realizes that she has drank more wine than she had intended.

He stands and walks toward her, until he is so close to her, she can feel his breath on her skin. “You know me better than anyone. You know, I would not tease you.” 

She does not remember who started the kiss. She has thought of it, so often, it has frayed like cloth would from her mind's touch. The memory has changed and faded and she cannot trust it. She thinks he kisses her, confident, practiced, certain. She is too fervent too rushed, lacking grace or skill. He does not tease her. His eyes are dark with desire, almost black, and he shows her with his body how to kiss. It must be the desire and the wine that makes her bold. It might be this man holding her in his arms

She pushes her hands beneath his shirt to run her calloused fingers against his chest, to run her fingers against his cock, hard beneath his pants. He pulls back, breathless. “I think you should leave, Brienne.”

She moves closer. “So that is it.. That is all you have to say. Tomorrow we could die and you will send me from here shamed. “

“That is the last thing I would do to you.. Which is why I won't take you to bed. “

 

She leans against him and whispers. She says it so softly, she can barely hear it. “ We could be together.”

She knows that is impossible and that he has told her as much. She knows this and yet she still wants him to say yes. She wants to believe it and drown in the sweetness of it. 

Like the selkies and their nets of long beautiful hair in which they drown sailors they have fallen in love with.

She never speaks of her wants. She does not now. She believes actions are louder than words, more honest. Coming here to his bedchamber speaks volumes.

“A long time ago, I made vows to be a member of the Kingsguard; Cersei, Daenerys, Jon Snow. It does not matter. I promised my life to another. Surely, you know this, thick headed woman..” 

“Of course,” she says too quickly, too curt. Her voice is overflowing with emotion. “No one will have me, not even the Kingslayer. I am ugly, too big, like a bear.” 

“Wench, why do you seem so willing to leave? What if I am not done with your company?”

He stands between her and the door, “I would have you but you deserve more. You deserve a husband to care for you to love you.”

“That will never happen.” 

“I am sure the Starks will make that redheaded wildling a lord, Tormund. Jon Snow loves him like a brother. Marry him. Everyone has seen how he looks at you. He worships you. Any woman would want to be with a man that looks at you as he does…”

“I don’t. He doesn’t understand me. He is loud, boorish, an overgrown child, always leering at me.”

“You can teach him about you. He seems like the kind of man who would be willing to learn.” 

 

He whispers to her, touching her scarred cheek. “I wish it were as easy for other men. For some, it is complicated. I would not lie to you. Not tonight or any night. Make me an oath… that if you survive, you will go back to Tarth and find someone to have children with, whether it is Tormund or another man. You need to be happy. Happiness would look good on you. ” 

“I made an oath of service to Lady Sansa.”

“She will release you if you survive all of this. You will make an excellent mother. It would be a shame for you to never hold your own child. Swear to me.”  
He kisses her. She is blushing. It is like he is saying goodbye to her.

“I swear.” 

He steps away from the door. She looks at him. “I will not let you fall on that battlefield, Jaime Lannister. I let Renly fall. I will not let you fall. I swear that to you, as well.” 

He smiles, “I would expect no less.”

She smiles and leaves the room, never looking back. It is the last time she talked to him before he died. She saw him in the battle the next day, but it was the last time they actually spoke. 

She is almost to the top of the staircase, thinking on why she married Tormund after all. Perhaps, it was the celebration the fact so many people were getting married. They might have been caught up in it all. 

She knows the real reason. The real reason is he stayed with her, after she woke and realized she failed Jaime, just like Renly. He held her when she cried, red-faced and ugly, like a mewling cow, not making a single joke, not speaking at all. When she was done, Tormund had washed her face, like she was a child, and he checked her bandages. When he was done, he kissed her softly and told her of how great their children would be and the future he could see for them, a future that would be long and full of many big strong happy children. She was sick of death and hopelessness. She didn’t want scraps or broken things. She wanted a long sunny future, full of happiness on the shores of Tarth. She had pushed him on the floor and lost her maidenhead on the rug in front of the fire, while he gently, slowly made love to her, until she called his name out.

When she opened the door, he was on the floor on a bed roll drinking from a jug of ale. His white skin is as white as the moonlight on the dark sea. He had taken off his tunic and he is only in his pants. 

He sees her and says, “It is so fucking hot here? How do you stand it?”

“I was going to say I was cold.” She smiles. The wet wind from the sea blows in behind her through the open windows.

“I was thinking of taking the boys to my Keep in the North. Show them their father's people, the woods, the snow.”

She sits down next to him on the floor. Her body is different softer. She has had seven children in the ten years of being married. Motherhood is its own kind of battle. She had said that once or something like it, but she understands it more and more. 

He never complains about how her body has changed. It doesn’t stop his desire. She places a hand on his bare chest and feels his heartbeat, sturdy, steady, dependable. She knows some of her bannermen look askance at her husband. He has learned her customs and followed her ways. She knows the Free Folk tease him for marrying a Lady so far South, but it never bothers him. Only her speaking Jaime’s name worried him. 

“Tormund, I have misspoke. Perhaps, we could name the baby, Podrick.”

Podrick Payne is now a Lord in the Westerlands with his own keep and bannermen and a lady wife and children of his own. His eldest daughter he named Brienne. Podrick, who was the most loyal company she ever had.

He looks at her with such devotion that it still makes her flushed. She never knew it could be this way with anyone. He kisses her, deeply, passionately. His beard scratches against her face in its slightly, unpleasant way but she has learned to associate it with pleasure because it is her husband’s beard. There have been morning where her whole body has had burns from his beard all over it and she has reveled in the soreness, knowing how much delight he has in her body. He pulls her on top of him and she kisses him, happy 

There is nothing more hateful than failing to protect someone you love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay-- This chapter went a different direction then I intended. The more I thought about it, the more it became clear that Jaime wouldn't sleep with Brienne if he knows he will die in the morning. He would want her to survive and sleeping with her would muck things up for her. So, it is kind of fluffy, but I hope it is true to the characters.
> 
> Secondly, as I wrote this chapter, I really started like Tormund and Brienne and wouldn't it be nice for them to have a sunny future on the shores of Tarth.
> 
> One more chapter...


	3. Chapter 3

Once long ago, he was a prisoner of the Night’s Watch and Jon Snow had come to ask him how to bury Ygritte. He remembered how cold he had been and how stiff from being tied up. Tormund also remembered the grief he had felt for the boy in front of him, a man for sure, but so hesitant, so desperately in love with a woman who was dead. 

Tormund had thought about how even Ygritte would have laughed to hear him talk about what words to say to the dead. He had remembered how he told him the dead cannot hear you. He has been South for too long and perhaps he has begun to think they can. After all, his four boys all have the name of men long dead. What is the point in this? 

He was sad to see Jon fall all those years ago. When he had taken his first son out, he had told him the story of Lord Crow, Jon Snow, the Bastard of Winterfell, the Hero of the Free Folk, and his great white wolf Ghost. He had told him all the tales of the man he would be named after, a man of legends, but a small thing his body had been on the snow. All men look smaller when their spirits have left.

He walks with Brienne down the staircase. When they get to the bottom, she tries to pull him to their chamber. He will gladly go with her, but their youngest son needs a name and a talk in the moonlight, father to son. She tells him he has drunk too much and he should come to bed, but he tells her the Old Gods are speaking to him and it is time to name the baby. 

Tormund takes the baby from his cradle and goes outside to the godswood.

His youngest son looks like his mother with his golden hair and his smiling face. He is already strong and when he grips his father's finger, Tormund knows this son will be a warrior. He should have the name of a warrior. Sometimes, he thinks he has been among them too long and their soft ideas have started to grow inside his head.

 

He remembers the Kingslayer, Jaime Lannister. In the early dawn, on the day he died, Jaime had found Tormund, eating on the ramparts and drinking his sour goat’s milk. Tormund remembers it clearly as if it happened yesterday and not a decade ago. He had been thinking of finding a woman of the Free Folk and enjoying her for an hour or two before the army of the dead broke the horizon. 

Jaime Lannister came and sat down next to him. Tormund looks at him. “Why are you up here?”

“I have come to talk to you..”

“I don't know you.”

“No, but we have common interests.”

“What interests are those?” He took another sip. He handed it to Jaime to see if he wanted to drink. 

“I have seen the way you look at Brienne.”

Tormund had chuckled, “She and I are going to make beautiful, giant warriors, Kingslayer.” 

Jaime smiled at the thought, as if he could see them. He took a drink of the goat milk, swallowed it making a terrible face. “Gods, that is awful.”

Tormund took the milk skin back and took another gulp. 

Jaime looked at him. “I heard you dug yourself out of the snow, when the Wall fell. I have heard you fought alongside giants and that you climbed the Wall over a hundred times when it stood.

Tormund nodded in agreement and added “I also fucked a bear once.”

Jaime laughed and looked at the dark, clouded horizon.“I need you to help me. Keep Brienne safe. I will not be able to fight if I know she is unsafe.”

“Kingslayer, she does not need you or me to protect her. Have you seen her fight? She will be fine.” 

“Once, I told her she needed a man strong enough to tear her clothes and make her feel small. I thought I might be that man. I was wrong. I was wrong about a great many things, but you might be that man. A man who fights alongside giants, who faces the army of the dead, a man who fucks bears.” 

Tormund laughed and Jaime laughed with him. Jaime Lannister took another sip of the milk and stood up.

Tormund looked at him and told him the truth, “I will not let any harm come to her, as long as I draw breath.”

Jaime smiled again, before he walked into the darkness. 

Tormund takes his youngest son under the trees and the night sky, telling him about the Battle for the Dawn, about Jon and Daenerys, about the fire dragons and the ice dragon, about the men who fell, and about the moment the storm cleared and the sun broke through the clouds.

Tormund tells him of Podrick and how good and loyal he was to his mother, how he saved her life, and how he is a lord of his own keep, a good man, a fine name.

Tormund tells him of a great warrior that fought in the battle. Steady and true, handsome and valiant, he stood against overwhelming odds and when the battle was over, he was dead. He tells him how many songs they sing about this man, about his bravery, his skill, his redemption. 

After an hour or two, his newest son gets tired of listening to his father speak and starts to get fussy. He kisses the boy and whispers his name in his ear. After all, the boy has the right to know his name before anyone else.

Tormund wakes Brienne, when he climbs in bed beside her. He opens his arms and she settles in them.

“Brienne, I named our son... Jaime.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if there is a godswood in Tarth, but it does in this story...


End file.
